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Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention Martha Finnemore The Culture of National Security The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, by Peter J. Katzenstein, editor 5. Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention Martha Finnemore Since the end of the Cold War, states have increasingly come under pressure to intervene militarily and, in fact, have intervened militarily to protect citizens other than their own from humanitarian disasters. Recent efforts to enforce protected areas for Kurds and no-fly zones over Shiites in Iraq, efforts to alleviate starvation and establish some kind of political order in Somalia, the huge un military effort to disarm parties and rebuild a state in Cambodia, and to some extent even the military actions to bring humanitarian relief in Bosnia are all instances of military action whose primary goal is not territorial or strategic but humanitarian. Realist and liberal theories do not provide good explanations for this behavior. The interests that these theories impute to states are geostrategic and/or economic, yet many or most of these interventions occur in states of negligible geostrategic or economic importance to the interveners. Thus, no obvious national interest is at stake for the states bearing the burden of the military intervention in most if not all of these cases. Somalia is perhaps the clearest example of military action undertaken in a state of little or no strategic or economic importance to the principal intervener. Similarly, the states that played central roles in the un military action in Cambodia were, with the exception of China, not states that had any obvious geostrategic interests there by 1989; China, which did have a geostragetic interest, bore little of the burden of intervening. Realism and liberalism offer powerful explanations for the Persian Gulf war but have little to say about the extension of that war to Kurdish and Shiite protection through the enforcement of un Resolution 688. The United States, France, and Britain have been allowing abuse of the Kurds for centuries. Why they should start caring about them now is not clear. The recent pattern of humanitarian interventions raises the issue of what interests intervening states could possibly be pursuing. In most of these cases, the intervention targets are insignificant by any usual measure of geostrategic or economic interest. Why, then, do states intervene? This essay argues that the pattern of intervention cannot be understood apart from the changing normative context in which it occurs. Normative context is important because it shapes conceptions of interest. Standard analytic assumptions about states and other actors pursuing their interests tend to leave the sources of interests vague or unspecified. The contention here is that international normative context shapes the interests of international actors and does so in both systematic and systemic ways. Unlike psychological variables that operate at the individual level, norms can be systemic-level variables in both origin and effects.1 Because they are intersubjective, rather than merely subjective, widely held norms are not idiosyncratic in their effects. Instead, they leave broad patterns of the sort that social science strives to explain. http://www.ciaonet.org/book/katzenstein/katz05.html (1 of 25) [8/9/2002 1:52:47 PM] The Culture of National Security In this essay I examine the role of humanitarian norms in shaping patterns of humanitarian military intervention over the past 150 years.2 I show that shifts in intervention behavior correspond with changes in normative standards articulated by states concerning appropriate ends and means of military intervention. Specifically, normative understandings about which human beings merit military protection and about the way in which such protection must be implemented have changed, and state behavior has changed accordingly. This broad correlation establishes the norms explanation as plausible. The failure of alternative explanations to account for changing patterns of intervention behavior increases the credibility of the norms approach. I conclude with a discussion of ways to move beyond this plausibility probe. The analysis proceeds in five parts. The first shows that realist and liberal approaches to international politics do not explain humanitarian intervention as a practice, much less change in that practice over time, because of their exogenous and static treatment of interests. A constructivist approach that attends to the role of international norms can remedy this by allowing us to problematize interests and their change over time. The next section examines humanitarian action in the nineteenth century. It shows that humanitarian action and even intervention on behalf of Christians being threatened or mistreated by the Ottoman Turks were carried out occasionally throughout the nineteenth century. However, only Christians appear to be deserving targets of humanitarian intervention; mistreatment of other groups does not evoke similar concern. The third section investigates the expansion of this definition of "humanity" by examining efforts to abolish slavery, the slave trade, and colonization. Protection of nonwhite non-Christians did become a motivation for military action by states, especially Great Britain, in the early nineteenth century, when efforts to stop the slave trade began in earnest. But the scope of this humanitarian action was limited. Britain acted to stop commerce in slaves on the high seas; she did not intervene militarily to protect them inside other states or to abolish slavery as a domestic institution of property rights. It was not until decolonization that this redefinition of "humanity" in more universal terms (not just Christians, not just whites) was consolidated. The fourth section briefly reviews humanitarian intervention as a state practice since 1945, paying particular attention to the multilateral and institutional requirements that have evolved for humanitarian intervention. Contemporary multilateralism differs qualitatively from previous modes of joint state action and has important implications for the planning and execution of humanitarian interventions. The essay concludes by outlining questions about the role and origins of norms that are not treated here but could be addressed in future research. Using Norms to Understand International Politics Humanitarian intervention looks odd from conventional perspectives on international political behavior because it does not conform to the conceptions of interest that they specify. Realists would expect to see some geostrategic or political advantage to be gained by intervening states. Neoliberals might emphasize economic or trade advantages for interveners. As I discussed in the introduction, it is difficult to identify the advantage for the intervener in most post-1989 cases. The 1989 U.S. action in Somalia is a clear case of intervention without obvious interests. Economically Somalia was insignificant to the United States. Security interests are also hard to find. The U.S. had voluntarily given up its base at Berbera in Somalia because advances in http://www.ciaonet.org/book/katzenstein/katz05.html (2 of 25) [8/9/2002 1:52:47 PM] The Culture of National Security communications and aircraft technology made it obsolete for the communications and refueling purposes it once served. Further, the U.S. intervention in that country was not carried out in a way that would have furthered strategic interests. If the U.S. had truly had designs on Somalia, it should have welcomed the role of disarming the clans. It did not. The U.S. resisted un pressures to "pacify" the country as part of its mission. In fact, U.S. officials were clearly and consistently interested not in controlling any part of Somalia but in getting out of the country as soon as possible--sooner, indeed, than the un would have liked. The fact that some administration officials opposed the Somalia intervention on precisely the grounds that no vital U.S. interest was involved underscores the realists' problem. Intervention to reconstruct Cambodia presents similar anomalies. The country is economically insignificant to the interveners and, with the end of the Cold War, was strategically significant to none of the five on the un Security Council except China, which bore very little of the intervention burden. Indeed, U.S. involvement appears to have been motivated by domestic opposition to the return of the Khmers Rouges on moral grounds--another anomaly for these approaches--rather than by geopolitical or economic interests. Liberals of a more classical and Kantian type might argue that these interventions have been motivated by an interest in promoting democracy and liberal values. After all, the un's political blueprint for reconstructing these states is a liberal one. But such arguments also run afoul of the evidence. The U.S. consistently refused to take on the state-building and democratization mission in Somalia that liberal arguments would have expected to be at the heart of U.S. efforts. Similarly, the un stopped short of authorizing an overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq even when it was militarily possible and supported by many in the U.S. armed forces. The un, and especially the U.S., have emphasized the humanitarian rather than the democratizing nature of these interventions, both rhetorically and in their actions on the ground. None of these realist or liberal approaches provides an answer to the question, What interests are intervening states pursuing? In part this is a
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